


Within This Frail Crucible of Light

by Eldritchhorrors



Series: The Cold Song [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: BDSM, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Drama, First Time, M/M, Porn, Psychological Drama, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-20
Updated: 2011-09-20
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:46:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritchhorrors/pseuds/Eldritchhorrors
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is bored. Bored with no cases, bored with life, bored with everything. But he promised John, promised,that drugs were off the table.</p><p>And just because he is asking John for too much in return, doesn’t mean that John isn’t willing to give it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Within This Frail Crucible of Light

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second story in The Cold Song Series, and takes place just after I Hear Those Voices That Will Not Be Drowned. You should probably read that fic first. (Thinky Smut [omg so much smut], BDSM Themes, Romance. The series has a definite plot.) Please, do not get offended by any of the words I put in someone’s mouth concerning high functioning autism/Asperger’s. I am Asperger’s on the spectrum. I would like to thank my betas and brit pickers, Vector_Nyu, Grassle, and Omletlove, for doing such a wonderful job. BBC Sherlock belongs to Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, and the BBC. I am making no profit from their work.

Within this frail crucible of light

Like a chrysalis contained

Within its silk oblivion.

How lucky is this little light,

It knows her nakedness

And when it's extinguished

It envelops her as darkness

Then lies with her at night.

Loveliness like this is never chaste;

If not enjoyed, it is just a waste.

 

From The Rape of Lucretia

Composer: Benjamin Britten

Librettist: Arnold Duncan

 

Within This Frail Crucible Of Light

  
It was Phillip Glass’s Sonata for Violin and Piano today.

John entered the flat and could immediately hear the mournful strains of Sherlock’s violin being coaxed into the same malaise that seemed to be swallowing Sherlock. John sighed and squared his shoulders before trudging up the stairs and entering the flat. He knew Sherlock had probably heard him at the door, but the music continued even as he tossed his keys in a dish, a discordant clang that was at odds with the haunting lament Sherlock was playing with a taped piano accompaniment. Sherlock barely looked up before his eyes fluttered shut again and he turned in place, presenting his back and one shoulder to John. John could just make out the crescent of his eyelash, and the plane of his cheekbone. Sherlock was wearing a thin T- shirt, and John could see every movement of the bow in the flex of the fine muscles of his traps, delts and lats under the fine knit. Perfection of the human machine.

Sherlock was brilliant like a diamond, and John had seen too many people brought low by less than what Sherlock had been playing with.

Harry had been like that once. Not Sherlock intelligent-- no one was, but she had been alive and vital and had taken pleasure in things that weren’t at the bottom of a bottle. John hadn’t considered her drunken clubbing a problem in the beginning. It wasn’t as if they had a history of alcoholism in the family, just prescription pill popping and benign neglect from a flighty artist of a father, and the platitudinal admonishments of a schoolteacher mum. Nothing that most people hadn’t grown up with. Even coming out had been a bit of an anti-climax for Harry-- John’s military plans had created more of a stink.

She’d been considered odd and occasionally depressive before her formal diagnosis, and John’s resentment surely didn’t help, but that was supposed to be managed with therapy, psych drugs, something rational and medically approved, not...

So he hadn’t noticed when a few drinks with the girls had turned into nightly drinks with the girls, and then eventually leaving the girls behind. Finally, she had stopped going out altogether, since alcohol was cheaper at home, and there was nothing to interfere with the drinking, and no platform to showcase her irritating social awkwardness.

She hid it well at first. They talked on the phone more, managing to cover up the fact that they met less. She called him earlier and earlier, and never in the evening. She sounded brighter and happier than he’d ever heard. Everything was going swimmingly with Susan or Mary or whoever the girlfriend was at the time. Everything was fine, fine, fine.

It was too bright and happy. False. She didn’t work that way, never had.

But he  still didn’t catch on, until one day he ran into Margaret? Margery? He ran into her in the middle of Tesco’s (horrible things always happened at Tesco’s), and was alarmed at the bags under her eyes, and the fragility of her face, which crumpled like she did, against his coat. Tears and snot and heaving gulps of air against his chest in the middle of the aisle as he frantically looked around, patting her back in an awkward there-there, and he had no idea what was going on until she’d started pouring out her problems with Harry.

Harry.

He still felt gut sick thinking about it, even now. He didn’t like to think about the fact that he had missed so much. And him an almost-doctor. His own family. His sister.

John paused, dithering. Should he say something to Sherlock? He wasn’t sure what, though. He wasn’t going to apologise for demanding sobriety from his friend. And Sherlock’s quick dismissal and about-face had been a concise way of indicating just how much Sherlock wanted to speak to John.

Well Sherlock could stuff it, because John wasn’t letting anything of  his get into that state again.

John stuck his chin in the air and went up the stairs to his own room.

He thought he only imagined the accusatory bent the music had taken as it followed him up the steps.

***

This had been going on for a week, progressively getting worse and worse. They were between cases and everything was “boring, tedious, dull, insipid, tiresome, stupid,” and about a hundred other synonyms for what amounted to the same thing. It had been two weeks since Sherlock had thrown away the detritus of his habit and the drugs themselves. John didn’t fool himself that Sherlock hadn’t taken a last hit. He’d been too bird bright and practically vibrating with tension from the high, but John wasn’t going to quibble over one final injection when Sherlock was quitting for good.

John didn’t fool himself into thinking that Sherlock had quit for him, either. Drug use didn’t work that way. You quit for yourself or you didn’t quit at all. Sherlock had been changing since John had known him, taking the raw potential everyone saw in him and forming it into the current work in progress-- everyone had commented on it. The decision to quit had probably already been made, even if Sherlock wasn’t really aware of it on a conscious level. John had just given Sherlock the excuse he needed.

And Sherlock wouldn’t have lied about something like this. Not that Sherlock didn’t lie. He lied fairly regularly, but not about something he considered trivial and mundane. And he definitely considered drug use trivial and mundane. He lied about meeting people at goddamn pools, not sobriety-- that would be a waste of time and effort. In fact, Sherlock’s problem was that he was usually entirely too truthful at awkward times. A common side effect of...

‘Your mouth looks too small now...’

‘Considering the state of her knees...’

‘Psychosomatic limp...’

“Gay.”

John cringed.

He’d told Sherlock that he’d help, but John wasn’t sure what to do, since Sherlock wasn’t talking about it at all-- was mostly ignoring him. For the past few days he’d been lost in increasingly sad or frantic music.

Music, he’d found, was Sherlock’s emotional barometer.

Sherlock’s face, with all of it’s strange alien symmetry, was usually inscrutable, even to John. But what his face didn’t reveal, the music did.

When John first moved in he had thought that Sherlock was a violin hobbyist that would play the occasional Mozart, but Sherlock’s life revolved around music, just as much as murder. Sherlock did play Mozart occasionally, and other pieces that John recognised from his own time playing the clarinet. Some Brahms, definitely. Mendelssohn, yeah. Some pretty, flirty piece he’d heard in a film or three but couldn’t remember the name of. But Sherlock was serious about the violin, and more than once John had entered the flat to a furious Sarasate that amazed him with its brilliance. Sherlock had almost scared him then-- not because of his virtuosity, no, but because of the look on his face-- fierce, haunted, pursued. It was at odds with the music.

People who considered Sherlock an emotionless robot had obviously never heard Sherlock play, and had never heard Sherlock play Paganini. Sherlock wasn’t the most technically proficient with the Caprices, which probably irked him, but he played with such passion and emotion that his skill could not be denied. Sherlock loved music, got lost in music, played like he was in pain.

And it wasn’t just the violin.

Sherlock’s digital music collection was housed in a terabyte external hard drive with another as backup. His CDs were kept in a large cupboard, and never tossed around with the lassez-faire disdain he used on almost everything else. John had gone looking once, early in their association, thinking to find some classical to play, and was amazed by the variety. There was classical, yes, but John was familiar enough to know that most people chose a genre or two that they really liked, and stuck with that. Sherlock had it all, though, separated by genre, and then by composer and artist. And then there was jazz, and blues, and klezmer and bhangra. Rock music and punk and really gay 80’s pop.

Sherlock had everything and anything, and John became an expert at reading Sherlock through his musical choices.

This past week...

Sherlock played the violin like a fighter. The next day, like a funeral dirge.

The day after that...he didn’t play the violin at all.

Nor the next day. Nor the next.

John was a doctor. He knew the signs of cocaine withdrawal. They weren’t the dramatic physical symptoms of an opiate low, no Trainspotting moments for Sherlock, but in many ways they could be worse, especially for someone who prided themselves on mind over transport-- cocaine withdrawal was all in the brain. Depression, anxiety, agitation, suspicion. He’d fucked with the re-absorption of dopamine in his brain, and it would take time for his head to get back to normal.

For a given value of normal, anyway.

John knew the clinical signs, but when Sherlock stopped playing the violin, he knew things were coming to a head. He was brooding on the sofa, listening to CDs.

On Monday, Sherlock was playing Arvo Part’s Cantus-- funereal and haunting. On Tuesday, Berg’s Wozzeck-- easily some of the most disturbing music John had ever listened to. Wednesday, Jim Thirlwell’s Descent Into The Inferno-- the voice of a devil. Thursday, Devotchka, Dearly Departed-- depressing as all hell, and the blank look Sherlock slanted his way when John walked in the door gave him the willies, a creeping sensation down to his bones that raised the hair on his arms in a fear response that he thought had died due to attrition. There was something deep there. Dark and ugly, and it made him want to hit things to make Sherlock better, because this was as close to dead inside as John had ever seen him.

Friday...Christ. Friday John came home to a war zone.

When he walked in the door he could hear the discordant crash of guitar and drum, the alien bend of a synthesizer, quick and furious. There was a scattering of sheet music that he stepped around as he walked up the stairs. When he opened up the door he was hit with a wall of sound like an angry fist, barely human vocals vibrating with nihilist rage. He registered the noise first, then the mess. Books and papers had been rifled through with little regard for order, some torn from their shelves, some ripped in two. Projects that had been labeled in-progress had been swept aside, and broken beakers decorated the floor and tables.

John crunched through one, doing a slow turn in the middle of the room to take in all of the destruction. One chair, thankfully not his favorite, had a gash in the back that was hemorrhaging stuffing and a spring torn from its mooring. Knives, probably all of the ones in the flat, decorated the wall in a pattern around the grotesque happy face that was already there. The guest mugs were tossed in the fireplace, shards of ceramic decorating the grate like headstones.

John gaped at the mess, but wasn’t actually surprised. He’d expected Sherlock to cave in at some point, and given his penchant for melodramatics, this was not the worst case scenario John had built up in his head.

He was looking for the remote to turn off the blaring sound when he finally found Sherlock. He’d thought that the throw blanket had been laying oddly where it was tossed in front of the sofa, but it was actually Sherlock wrapped up like a cocoon.

John ignored the noise, which seemed to be reaching a crescendo of American punk angst, and fell to his knees next to Sherlock, who didn’t even look up to acknowledge him.

“Sherlock?” It was a stupid question, since the music was turned up so loud and John had practically whispered it, but Sherlock’s eyes flickered towards him for a moment before returning to their fascinated perusal of the wall. The blanket tightened around him a fraction.

The music suddenly came to an abrupt halt, and John breathed a short lived sigh of relief before the same music started again-- must be on a loop. Sherlock could have been listening to the same angry ranting all day.

“Sherlock.”

John reached out but didn’t touch him, instead he hovered a hand over Sherlock’s arm, shoulder, chest, wanting to touch but not sure if that would help or hinder his effort to understand what was going on.

The music wasn’t helping. It was too loud, too angry. The singer’s voice was distorted almost beyond recognition, except for the repeated refrain of ‘I hate everything that is not myself.’ John found it disturbing, considering the state of Sherlock and the flat.

“Please?”

Sherlock gave him a look that withered, then suddenly flounced up into something that wasn’t quite a kip-up, but had him on his feet anyway. The sudden spasm of movement surprised John, and he fell back a bit. Sherlock had retained the duvet, and was now at the window, staring into the late afternoon, trailing the blanket behind him like a ghost’s shroud. He was agitated, but trying not to show it. Sherlock normally paced when he was bothered, but now he only twisted those long fingers in the fabric wrapped around him, wringing it.

John finally found the remote for the player and hit the Power button, abruptly ceasing the cacophony in favour of a tense silence.

John still didn’t know what to say, but that didn’t matter, because the moment to speak was upon him.

“Sherlock...”

“Save me your insipid platitudes.”

“You’re repeating yourself. That’s the tenth insipid in the past two days.”

“Well if everything wasn’t so--”

“What, Sherlock? What?” John knew that Sherlock would get increasingly bitchy, but it didn’t make the lashing out hurt any less. Besides, Sherlock thrived on argument, so John didn’t fight the instinct to rebut at all. “Insipid? Boring? Like I’m boring?” John crossed his arms and tapped his chin, pretending to think. “Oh, I know...juvenile. Isn’t that what you called me yesterday?”

“Sophomoric.” Sherlock was pacing now. Quick strides of those ridiculous legs as he gazed into his own head, blanket whipping behind him when he turned, the dramatic twat.

“And name calling isn’t? We both know what this is about. No need to take it out on me.”

“Oh, yes. ‘We both know what this is about,“ Sherlock parroted, “and yet you once again fail to grasp the point.” His glower was typical.

“Fail to...I’m not a damned mind reader!”

“You told me anything! Anything at all, you said.” Sherlock was building up a head of rage. He span towards John and ran one hand through his hair, making it stand up in flippant Lynchian disarray. “But you haven’t delivered at all, and I’m...”

“I’m supposed to become your punching bag while you dry out? Is that your definition of help?”

He’d said anything. He’d meant anything. But not if the cure was worse than the disease. Not if Sherlock traded something monstrous for becoming a monster.

“Don’t you-- Can’t you--” Sherlock seemed to find the end of his tether and snap it, because suddenly Sherlock was coming at him, Sherlock was pushing him, hands on John’s shoulders and shoving him, and John couldn’t believe it, couldn’t stop himself from ingrained reaction, couldn’t stop the need to defend himself. John grabbed Sherlock’s wrists with both hands, but Sherlock struggled like a wild thing, so he pushed his knee into Sherlock’s abdomen, taking that momentum to propel his weight into Sherlock, managing to stumble them over the table and into the sofa with Sherlock pinned under him in a tight hold, and John was just beginning to freak, just beginning to loosen his hands when he got a look at Sherlock’s reaction, and--

“Oh.” He hated it when Sherlock was right and he was wrong, because God, God, he had been stupid, so stupid, and Sherlock was...

“Yes,” Sherlock hissed as he saw the cresting light of comprehension in John’s eyes. Sherlock’s own eyes had given him away. Grey eyes, pupils dilating without the benefit of drugs, ringed in a dark hue like a Hubble nebula ringed in space, expanding with the universe.

And his mouth, that mobile bow of pink that was usually curled into a sneer or ironic smile when not flattened into a line, that mouth was parted and red and wet.

“Jesus.” John suddenly realised where he was, how he was, and released Sherlock’s hands, aborting the wave-like movement Sherlock had tried against his whole body. John rabbited over to the far end of the sofa, running his fingers through his hair, trying to make sense of bizzarro Sherlock and his own -- carried away, too physical, too much \-- reaction. “You don’t want me to be the punching bag at all. You...” John trailed off into a small laugh that had a touch of hysteria and absolutely no humour. He knew what Sherlock wanted. Knew it from  the deep tug of reciprocity in his gut just how Sherlock wanted it, sense and muscle memory filling in the blanks of how it would be.

He couldn’t do this again. Couldn’t open himself up to this, not when Sherlock was so...

Sherlock lay where he had landed for a moment, glaring, awkward and hot, before levering himself up to lean into the arm of the sofa. The blanket was still miraculously with him, and he tightened it round like it had been when John had first found him. Sherlock’s eyes were boring into him, and John was trying not to look, but John could feel it, and the phantom feeling of all of Sherlock pressed against him, the ghosts of Sherlock’s wrists in his hands as he clenched down on him, and...

“You’re trying to talk yourself out of it.”

“There’s nothing to talk myself out of.” There wasn’t. He wasn’t stupid, whatever Sherlock said on a tear. Sherlock might think he needed this now, but what happened when John wasn’t enough?

John had divorced himself from that world entirely-- having nothing was better than having bread and water while looking with envy at the feast laid out for everyone else. He had a small part of  Sherlock, and that trumped any fleeting pleasure he could take from this whatever-it-was that Sherlock was proposing. He couldn’t-- wouldn’t-- let himself get more invested than he was.

Not when Sherlock could find something else more interesting at any time. John didn’t want to be a...failed experiment.

“You know exactly what I mean.” Sherlock just stared at him, willing him to agree.

“I mean it. I don’t...” John was shaky, and ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t do this now.”

“You think tomorrow would be any better? You might like to try fooling yourself, but we both know that you aren’t...uninterested.” Sherlock’s eyes molested their way down John’s front to hover below his waistline.

“Sherlock. I don’t. I haven’t...”

Sherlock sneered. “John Watson. Attractive but not stunningly so. A nice bloke, most people think. Lost his virginity at an early age to an older girl who liked to think she was corrupting the innocent. But you’d had enough stories from an older sister who liked to think she was shocking you with her behavior. So he tried it on, everything the girl wanted, and John Watson found he liked the power of being on top, liked...the accouterments. He dived into sex and its more esoteric related subheadings head-first-- and found a taste for danger there. Addicted to adrenaline even then.“

John had thought he was used to Sherlock pulling information from thin air, but it hadn’t been turned on himself with such precision since that first meeting, and even then the assessment hadn’t been so deeply personal.

“Not the receiving end, but giving, yes, that makes so much sense. A doctor, you see, likes to ‘take care of others’. That’s a phrase that covers so much territory, don’t you agree?” He raised a supercilious eyebrow.

“How did you know?”

“We know our own. Don’t pretend differently.” Sherlock sniffed. “There are also clues if you know enough to look for them. You haven’t recoiled from anything related to sadomasochism. Instead, you gave me an intrigued look when I mentioned the crop at our first meeting, then you actually showed up here, later. And you’ve been extremely comfortable around anyone with an alternative lifestyle that we’ve interviewed.” Sherlock, lost in thought, spidered a finger down the line of his own cheek, and not for the first time John cursed the fact that Sherlock’s hands were so expressive, so...

“But it goes deeper than that, even. You have a strong feeling of hierarchy, yet you automatically buck against anyone who challenges you for top status...look at your first meeting with my brother. You are a doctor acclimatised to field surgery during brutal conflict, yet you always err on the side of extreme gentleness. Most doctors of my acquaintance prefer brisk efficiency.”

“Oh, c’mon...”

“You know you enjoy inflicting pain, so you take great steps to make sure you aren’t the cause of it.”

“It’s not like that. I’m not a sadist. I don’t think about my patients like-- I don’t enjoy--”

“No. But it  has become habitual. You enjoy some pain, so you fear enjoying all pain.”

There wasn’t really anything John could say to that. It sounded so horrible when said out loud.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”

That was probably the nicest thing Sherlock had ever said to him. He knew, intellectually, that it was quite common, that there was nothing inherently wrong with it, but that didn’t seem to stop the small bubble of shame that lodged in his craw whenever he thought of it. He’d taken an oath, even though he’d never been able to properly define harm.

Would it be harm, to give Sherlock what he wanted? Physically, it would be nothing that wouldn’t heal. But mentally? He didn’t know.

“Dear John, sweet John,  dominant  John, found himself going to clubs, meeting people, and shagging himself rotten to the tune of their cries.”

John looked over at Sherlock, at the want that spread over his face for just a fraction of a second. John’s mouth was dry, but he licked his lips all the same and tried to find the words as he wiped his now sweaty palms against his trousers. “I don’t think...”

“Why’d you stop? Was it an accident?” John went to answer, but Sherlock answered his own question. “No, something deeper, something that keeps you from pursuing it, even now. Even though you’ve thought of this. Us.” Sherlock gave him a keen stare as if he had just unlocked all of John’s secrets. Probably had. “Ah.”

“Ah?” The smug  bastard . Didn’t he know that John couldn’t afford that kind of emotional tangle? He’d been fragile enough before pink had overthrown the natural boring order of things. He didn’t need to go courting unrequited--

“You  are a doctor, aren’t you? Through and through.”

John looked away. “You’re guessing.”

“We both know that it isn’t just about sex.”

John cleared his throat and replied because Sherlock seemed to expect it. “No. It’s not.”

“It was a  good  guess.” Sherlock was pleased with himself, a far cry from the madman tearing through the room not ten minutes previously. As if John had given him a mystery. “It’s about transcending the ordinary, but it’s surprising just how few people realise that. They think they want a titillating shag, when what they really want is knowledge. That’s how it is for you, isn’t it?”

“And if it is?”

“You think I deduced it, but I didn’t extrapolate from data John.”

“No?”

“I hoped.” Sherlock sat up, leaned forward and let the blanket drop away, as intent as John had ever seen him.

John could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise with the small thrill that danced through his central nervous system.

“Reaching subspace by pushing and surpassing perceived human boundaries to achieve enlightenment. When you think about it in that context, it almost becomes a humanist imperative, don’t you think? ” Sherlock focused on something John couldn’t see and nodded to himself. “It’s a powerful thing. Pity so few people take advantage of it.” He looked pensive, almost lost for a moment before looking back up at John, wearing something that on anyone else would be called uncertainty. “Is that how it is for you?”

“Yes.” Sherlock’s powers of perception had never really frightened him before, not before this at any rate. The point of being a top was to  not be vulnerable, to own someone else’s vulnerability in your hands. Yet here he was, naked.

“You really do like to take care of others. Isn’t it awful, being a therapist of sorts when none of your charges get better? Just marking time till the session is up and they come back just as naked and wrong as before. No growth, just hamsters on a treadmill hoping for a little slap and tickle before they die.” Sherlock was looking at him, really looking at him, and John thought he saw a quiver of something there, like hope. All he could do is look back, stony faced, just the way  he’d got through several military debriefs. Better that than seeing what he wanted to see, rather than what was.

But he couldn’t stop himself from answering truthfully. “Yes.”

“Isn’t it terrible, knowing that you need to make each moment count, each movement memorable and worthy, when all they want to do is get into the thick of it so they can get off, as if the orgasm is the release?”

“Do you?” Just two words, but Sherlock would know what he meant. Is that how it was for Sherlock as well? Had Sherlock looked for something greater and found everything, every one , wanting? Had he given up, like John? How did he know the disappointment of...

“I see it. I see it all the time. It’s all good, John? Try  none of it good.  I don’t eat because the food doesn’t satisfy.”

“Because they are stupid and ordinary.”

Sherlock inclined his head. “Because they are stupid and ordinary.”

“But--”

“You’re never ordinary.”

John snorted, despite the gravity that bore down on him. Even during a massive tectonic relationship shift, trust Sherlock to deny his ordinariness, but not his stupidity.

“You said anything,” Sherlock said as he rose. “I don’t need the drugs, but I need my perceptions challenged.” He seemed to hesitate, looking for the right words, maybe the best way to convince him. “I don’t want to be bored. I want you to think about that.”

John didn’t think that was what he was originally going to say, and could only shake his head in an inadequate denial that Sherlock just ignored. Ignored! Even though nothing could be the same between them after this.

High altitude free fall.

Shooting a man to save a patient.

The first crack of a whip.

“Think about it. And ask me tomorrow. You won’t be bored either.”

“Ask you what?”

But Sherlock didn’t answer him, just looked at him with those almond eyes narrowed and his head tilted back exposing the column of his vulnerable throat, and John’s brain shorted for a brief moment. When he came back to himself, Sherlock was already making his way to his room.

John stayed cornered on the sofa for a long time before shaking himself out of his stupor and crunching his way through glass to the stereo to see what godawful music had been playing. He’d never heard of it, and if it was something Sherlock only resorted to in that kind of mood, John wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to hear it again.

He didn’t see Sherlock at all the rest of the night. Not while he cleaned. Not while he pretended to watch telly. Not as he went to bed.

He didn’t sleep for a long time. Instead, he stared at his dark ceiling and thought.

***

Sherlock was already up when John came down in the morning. John hadn’t slept well, but through the interminable twilight between sleeping and waking he’d marshaled his thoughts into a cohesive whole.

Sherlock was…being creepy again. He was in a mushroom blue shirt with the sleeves rucked up, unfastened French cuffs flopping around his pointy elbows, one hand at his side, and the other tracing the contours of the skull on the mantel with colourless fingers. He looked like a bad audition for some modern avant-garde adaptation of Hamlet that would get rave reviews, but that no one with sense would actually like.

John couldn’t resist, but it wasn’t a Hamlet quote that came to mind. “Webster was much possessed by death, and saw the skull beneath the skin.”

The amused look Sherlock sent him made John relax a small amount, the slight tangle of anxiety between his shoulder blades loosening. “Eliot, John?”

“Eliot, Sherlock?” John raised an eyebrow, and smiled in spite of himself. “I thought that you deleted everything that was useless.”

“You are operating under the assumption that art is useless.”

John probably should have been surprised-- somehow, he wasn’t.

Sherlock didn’t stop there, but he didn’t stop his consideration of the skull, either. “Should I be worried that you are dwelling on a poem that finds the pursuit of meaning through sex to be a futile endeavour? Made a decision then?” It wasn’t anything in Sherlock’s tone, or posture, none of that had changed, yet John fancied that Sherlock was nervous about his answer.

He didn’t want to consider why that warmed him.

“Not yet.”

Sherlock dropped his hand and turned to face him, taking in everything about John from head to toe and looking unhappy with his results. Something pinched and wary round his eyes.

“We need to talk about this,” John said.

“So talk.” Chin up. Arrogant. Bravado?

“Is this just another game to you?”

“Of course not.”

“Because it can’t be. Not to me. I stopped all that for a reason.” Sherlock had been right about that. John had got bored with the variety, which had lots of acrobatics but little in the way of real human connection. He’d tried to find a partner in the scene, but soon resigned himself to the fact that the people he wanted for something longer term weren’t  in the scene.

The scene. A joke. A frustration. Sadness. In some ways the scene was a little too accepting. Everyone welcome, little verboten. It became a great refuge for people that needed honest mental help, but instead of getting that help they were able to bury themselves in domination games and pain. They didn’t get better, instead, they entered a holding pattern with no end in sight. Since no one carried a sign that said mother-issues or daddy-damage, every hookup became a potential minefield.

As a doctor, the sight of so many untreated open wounds was a visceral pain. He wanted to see a person come undone, be truly themselves with no artificial mask between him and the core of who they were as the pain stripped away layer upon layer of false faces. As those faces stripped, he found festering sores that he wasn’t equipped to deal with, didn’t want to deal with. Especially since the people involved didn’t want to deal with them either. Ticking time bombs, the lot.

Then there were people like John. No trauma (previous to the war) that demanded feeding, no mental illness that was looking for stimulation. He was a soldier because he was an adrenaline junkie, not the other way around. He was a doctor because he liked helping people. He was a doctor  and  a soldier because he was a control freak. And he was...yes, incurably dominant. He liked the thrill of it, pushing someone to the far reaches of their threshold, carrying them along before finally, finally letting them fly. Owning them, making them own their pain, find what they were made of. In the few truly symbiotic relationships he’d seen, both partners grew and changed as if wrapped in a chrysalis. It was amazing. Beautiful. It was...out of his reach.

He’d never been able to find a partner like that. Gradually, he’d splintered away from that lifestyle. Forgot how much he liked their cries, the tang of blood in the air, the way a person could be completely revealed. Gradually, he’d forgotten how much he’d...

Damn Sherlock.

“I told you--” Sherlock started.

“Let me tell you for a change. These are my terms, you need to respect them.”

Sherlock huffed and subsided.

“I can have sex without the scene, but there isn’t such a thing as a nonsexual scene. Not for me.”

Sherlock gave a barely perceptible start before moving to the sofa and collapsing into it. John imagined it was a stall for time as he assimilated that.

“I’m not lifestyle, Sherlock, whatever that means. I crave it, but I don’t need it or want it all the time. I don’t… I’m not one of those people that needs to wear leather to the shops at ten in the morning.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“But I’m also not one of those people who can do this sort of thing with someone they like without it meaning something. Not anymore.” John didn’t fidget. The army beat that kind of thing out of you, but something inside was trembling on the edge of a cliff dive, a base jump, a high altitude low-opening thrill. “Not with you.”

“You want a relationship.” Sherlock said relationship like he was anticipating the taste of a battery, but he relaxed his shoulders, as if the weight he was expecting didn’t come. He seemed...surprised? Was it so surprising then, someone wanting to be with him?

“If you want to pursue this, it would have to be within the terms of a normal relationship.”

He wasn’t sure what Sherlock was thinking. He had sunk back into the cushions, brow furrowed as he digested what John had to say. John would have preferred something. Some sign of yea or nay.

He must be barking, asking for a relationship at all. Sherlock was  definitely the type that played BDSM games instead of getting therapy, though to be perfectly honest, he didn’t think there was a therapist alive that Sherlock wouldn’t devour like an intellectually superior shark.

But the John that had turned up his nose at the broken inertia of others had found himself broken in turn. Not by a person, but by circumstance -- the choices of war were surprisingly easy -- the options post-injury were not. He’d lost the underpinnings of all he was, adrenaline junkie, control monster, aid to the needy...

Sherlock had given him back much of what he had lost, but he still felt fractured, and the broken bits of John recognised a kindred spirit in Sherlock. Sherlock, who wanted BDSM like a Band-Aid.

But there had been something to what Sherlock had said, the way he said it, as if he understood.

Something that promised him the ‘more’ he craved, even though the map laid out in front of him also said ‘here be dragons.’

As if John were the only one that could fill this hole in Sherlock’s psyche.

Sherlock, who had already filled a hole in John’s soul.

When all was said and done-- it was  Sherlock .

He hadn’t been thinking about taking Sherlock up on his offer, that was decided the instant it left Sherlock’s lips, no matter the outcome. He’d been thinking about his terms. And he needed terms. He needed to keep some sort of buffer between them so he could function if, no,  when  Sherlock decided that John was no longer--

Sherlock’s lip curled in the corner, a slight sneer that spoke volumes. “Bit like emotional blackmail, isn‘t it?”

Sherlock would know. “Not at all. I told you what I need. You can always say no.”

“Aren’t you bothered by the idea of a relationship with a sociopath? High functioning or not, we aren’t known for creating conjugal bliss. Quite the opposite, really.” Sherlock looked unaffected, but John wasn’t buying it. He always had to push for more information, even if the push wasn’t in his best interests. Maybe especially then. Didn’t mean he had no interest in the outcome.

John  walked over to the chair facing the sofa and sat, threading his fingers together in the same way he’d seen Sherlock do. He couldn’t stop the almost eager look from flitting across his face. He couldn’t contain the almost giddy glee he felt at being able to finally call Sherlock out...

“Well. That might be an issue.” John nodded his head to agree. “If you were a sociopath, that is.”

...call him out on his bullshit.

Sherlock just looked on with a long face, settling back into the seat even more as he stifled a small sigh of derision. “John--”

“I’m not an idiot. And you aren’t a sociopath. I can list the reasons why, but you already know them by heart, don’t you?”

“Are you deducing me?” Sherlock smiled despite the way his eyes had tightened at the corners.

“If necessary.”

“By all means.” A benevolent wave of his hand said ‘get on with it.’

“First, sociopaths cultivate charm as their main weapon of choice. They use it so well that most go completely undiagnosed.” John ticked down one finger. “You can’t be arsed to be charming unless it’s needed. You are the  opposite of charming.”

“I’m charming.” Sherlock’s voice bled offence as if Anderson had offered to lick his shoes.

“Only as long as you need to be to get answers from a suspect. You said it throws your back out.”

Sherlock blinked at him, trying to appear languid and bored, but the whitening skin on his knuckles gave him away.

“Second, your morality. It isn’t the morality that everyone else is using, but you adhere to the standards you set for yourself. Almost obsessively so.” Another finger ticked over.

“Third. You lie about things that might be dangerous, or to help others, but you never much bother, otherwise.” Third finger down. “Strange, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“A sociopath, not lying to emotionally manipulate everyone they meet.”

“Emotions are boring.”

“Wrong answer. Sociopaths love emotions-- on other people. It’s their main source of amusement, mind fucking. And you just warned me away from you, you daft git.”

“Reverse psychology.”

“Could have been,” John agreed. “But it wasn’t.”

“I’m not a nice person, John.” Sherlock was squirming now, and avoiding eye contact.

“But you care. Don’t tell me any different, I won’t believe you. You’re a right arsehole sometimes, but not a deliberately cruel one, and that isn’t the only criteria for sociopathy, anyway. Not even close. And you’re an arsehole because you tell too much truth.”

“John…” Sherlock could finally see where this was going, but there wasn’t much he could do to stop it.

“Let’s list the symptoms you do have.”

“Does arsehole go at the top of the list?” Sherlock’s tone was annoyed and exasperated, since he had already deduced the denouement of John’s little lecture, but he was going along with it all the same.

“Why not?” John smiled, trying to take the sting out of it. “Arsehole.”

Sherlock’s responding smile was sarcastic.

“Brutally truthful. Stares too much.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes.

“Absurdly high pain tolerance, hypersensitive smell-- your senses are skewed.”

“How--”

“You don’t often notice when you’re hurt. I notice it, though.”

“Maybe I’ve just built up my tolerance to--”

“Obsessive compulsive behavior. Obsession within a narrow field of interest. Texting over talking, predisposition to depression, literal interpretation of language, poor interpretation of body language and subtle social cues, poor grasp of physical boundaries. Eidetic memory. Should I go on?”

“Get to the point.”

“It wasn’t diagnosed until ‘94. It was often misdiagnosed as sociopathy.”

Sherlock closed his eyes and tilted his head back against the sofa, revealing the bob of his Adam‘s apple. “Yes.”

“So why didn’t you correct the diagnosis? It’s a neurological disorder, not a mental illness.”

“How did you know? You aren’t a psychiatrist. Nothing in your background screams mental health training.”

John laughed. “God, no. You missed it. You always get something wrong. This is the same something you got wrong before.”

Sherlock’s head bolted back up in interest. “Your sister? Your sister is…”

“She’s an arsehole too.”

“Never got on.”

“She was much worse as a kid, and I was jealous over the amount of attention she got. She’s grown out of a lot of it, but she still self medicates. And you know how I feel about that.”

Sherlock scowled. “That’s why we’re discussing this at all, really.”

“You didn’t answer. Why not change the diagnosis?”

Sherlock looked straight at him, eyes cool and hard. “No one pities a sociopath.”

“I don’t pity you now.” John was straightforward. “You are the least pitiable person I know.”

“Sociopaths are feared. What most people know about autism and genius couldn’t fill a thimble even if you combined them. I made the obvious choice.” Sherlock cocked his head. “Just ask Sgt. Donovan.”

“Hmm.”

“And who is to say that we aren’t both right? There are often comorbid issues.”

“I don’t know if there is a neat little box to shove you into.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Now that we’ve shared confidences about our neurological requirements, maybe you can give me an answer.”

“It’s still boyfriends or just friends, I’m afraid.”

“And this boyfriend thing. How does that work?”  
  
Sherlock wasn’t looking at him. John wished he would. This was the quicksand he didn’t want to get into. “What do you mean?”

“Is it just to legitimise the sex for the sake of middle class morality? Friends with benefits?”

“No!”

“Or do you have designs of a more romantic nature?” Sherlock tried to look cool and arrogant, and succeeded for the most part, but his voice gave him away, tentative as it was, unsure.

John averted his eyes and didn’t reply. Trust Sherlock to get to the heart of what John didn’t want to discuss, to pick up on exactly what John wasn’t saying. 

His voice became amused at John’s expense. “I hate the term boyfriend. It‘s weak minded and spineless. I prefer to think of us as…accomplices.” .

John snorted. “If that’s true, then we’ve been dating for six months.”

“Haven’t we been?” He raised his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth turned up.

John looked at him with incredulity. Was Sherlock really saying what he thought he was saying? He wasn’t-- “You were awfully apologetic at Angelo’s that first night.”

“I didn’t have much libido that first night, either.” Sherlock stroked one slim hand down the front of his shirt and raised an eyebrow, not in question, but a challenge that seemed to go straight to John’s groin.

John sucked in a breath, cock beginning to thicken as Sherlock’s eyes became intent. “Christ. Are you serious? Are we really doing this?”

Sherlock shrugged. “No bondage.” He stood up, and John followed suit. He knew he’d have to take over, direct this at some point, but for right now he would follow Sherlock’s lead.

Not that he believed it was happening in the first place. Denial made it much easier to give in.

“No bondage,” he agreed. He was going to stick to his guns on his own needs, but right now he was willing to agree to anything else as long as Sherlock kept looking at him like an interesting corpse-- which didn’t sound right at all, but said fuck-all about the state of things at 221B.

Sherlock shied his gaze away from John for a moment, looking at the floor instead. “I mean it. It’s…a deal breaker. Restraint by hand is acceptable.” He took a step forward, capturing John’s eyes again.

“Got it. No bondage.” John’s heart was beginning to pound.

Sherlock took another step as he catalogued his likes and dislikes. “I’m a bottom, but any past submission would be considered a statistical outlier, though I will follow orders that are designed to lead to mutual fulfillment.” His hands went to his top shirt button, slipping it through the button hole with a minimum of fuss. It was possibly the driest, most clinical striptease that John had ever seen, but it was still the hottest, and those clever fingers hadn’t even got down to bare skin yet. Sherlock didn’t need to over dramatise the sexuality of stripping to make John’s mouth go dry. “I respond well to corporal punishment.”

Button.

“Electricity.”

Button.

“CBT.”

Button.

“Rough sex.”

Sherlock took another step forward into John’s personal space as he released the last button of his Paul Smith, revealing a swath of smooth chest, a constellation of freckles dotting the skin. John was close enough to smell the musk of his cologne, the faint chemical tang of a biocleansing agent, clean sweat. Sherlock.

“And…” Sherlock leaned his mouth into John’s ear as he shrugged the foggy blue cotton off his pale, pale speckled shoulders, bringing his voice down, low and smooth like polished mahogany. “Medical play.”

“Oh God.”

Sherlock’s hands went to his own belt even as he stared into John’s eyes.

“No scat, no watersports. No other parties. No verbal humiliation, though dirty talk is always appreciated.” John couldn’t look away from Sherlock’s eyes, though he heard the hiss of leather through the loops of Sherlock’s trousers, and the friction of zip teeth coming undone, just as he was coming undone, dismantled piece by piece from the inside, replaced with a throbbing kernel of want.

John cleared his throat. “That opera you were playing two days ago. What was it?”

If Sherlock was taken aback by the oddity of the question, he didn’t show it as he lowered his trousers to the floor, stepping out of them and kicking them away under the table.

“Britten. Rape of Lucretia. Probably the poorest of his libretto’s, but --”

“Crucible.”

Sherlock just looked at him, toying with the band of his boxer briefs.

“Your safe word. It’s crucible.”

Sherlock nodded once then skinned his pants down to reveal a long, pale cock, flushed pink and damp at the head.

He’d always looked so perfectly put together, even in his pyjamas, and nudity was no different. He was completely at home in his skin. John had imagined once, on a particularly bitter night spent indulging in sour grapes, that fucking Sherlock would be like sexing up a bag of antlers, but he’d been wrong. What could have been awkward angles and planes were lean muscle and whipcord tendon. Thin as a death’s head, but the underlying architecture of his body was so, so very beautiful.

As soon as the briefs were kicked away Sherlock slid to his knees like the flow of water, looking up at a fully dressed John with expectant heat. “I like to have my throat fucked.”

John felt the oxygen suck out of the room.

“Let’s do something about that, shall we?” Sherlock’s hands went to John’s zip.

John’s hands -- God, what was he  thinking \-- went to intercept them, taking Sherlock by the wrist and holding them away from his body. “Not yet. Not...yet.”

“Why not?” Sherlock looked cross.

“When you shot up, did you get it over with as quickly as possible, or did you draw it out?” For all John knew, this was a one off. Sherlock could decide tomorrow that he was perfectly fine not dealing with John’s squishy feelings. If they were going to do this, they’d do it properly so that John wouldn’t regret squandering the opportunities handed to him.

“You can be remarkably perceptive about some things.” Sherlock didn’t make it sound like a compliment.

“Then lets stick to the pace I set, okay?”

“Not your submissive.” Sherlock’s nose went in the air, and John felt an absurd welling of something soft in his chest.

“If that’s anything like not a housekeeper...”

“John.”

John retained Sherlock’s wrists, but went to his knees as well, and with considerably less grace. John moved into Sherlock, putting his mouth against Sherlock’s ear. “I need you to trust me, or this won’t work. Not for either of us.” John pulled away slightly to look at Sherlock’s face as he took the wrists he held and slowly moved them to the small of Sherlock’s back. He looked at Sherlock’s face and catalogued every hitch of his breathing, every distortion of pupil as he fixed Sherlock’s arms against his lumbar region.

“You came to me to give you what you need.”

“Then give it to me.” Sherlock’s words were haughty, defiant, but his eyes were asking for something elusive. Searching.

John leaned in closer, pressing his body to the one in front of him for the first time. There was nothing soft on Sherlock, but the skin that could look so cold was fever hot plastered against his front, the naked erection that pulsed against his fully clothed stomach was hard and moist. The sex musk of him surrounded them, salty in the air like brine or sea water.

“I’m going to give you everything. I’m going to give you almost more than you can take.”

“Then--”

“But this isn’t about your wants Sherlock.” John’s hand’s tightened down enough that Sherlock would have bruises on his wrists.”This is about what you need.”

“I need--”

“You’ve never been very good at taking care of your needs.”

“I took care of myself well before you arrived.”

John deepened his voice in poor mimicry. “Food interferes. Breathing’s boring. Oh, look, a shiny pill.”

“Fuck you.” Sherlock wriggled in his grasp, an equally poor parody of escape.

“I feed you. I clean after you. I entertain you--”

“Like a trained monkey --”His voice was scathing, but still no safe word.

“I shoot psychopaths for you.”

Sherlock...went limp against John, shoulders slumping.

Brilliant.

“If you think that I can’t take care of this for you...” John let a harder edge take over his voice as he pressed his groin hard against Sherlock, bucking up into that lean, furling body, pressing his cock into one hard thigh. “And in my own way...”

John transferred one of Sherlock’s wrists so that his other hand held both, leaving his dominant hand free to trail over Sherlock’s arse, pulling him in even harder, surprising a whimper out of him.

“Then you haven’t been paying attention.” John’s free hand moved round to Sherlock’s front, taking him by the base of the cock and squeezing until Sherlock started to vibrate like a tuning fork, a small movement that John felt everywhere they touched. “And you always pay attention, don’t you?”

Sherlock nodded before dipping his head to rest against John’s shoulder.

“Do you trust me?”

Sherlock nodded without looking up.

“Then trust me to do this for you.” John nudged Sherlock’s face up to his, to see if Sherlock understood, but Sherlock averted his eyes. “I can be what you need.” John hoped he wasn’t proved a liar.

Sherlock nodded again, but this time something seemed to unfurl inside him, something calm and certain. Something that wanted to believe. “Yes, John.”

John closed his eyes for a moment to savour the exquisite moment. Those two words were like the detonation of a massive ordinance in the vicinity of John’s chest, but he didn’t want to examine the whys of that very closely.

“Tell me what you want.”

Sherlock still didn’t look up, and John could see something flicker in his expression. Something...

“I want to hurt.”

“What else?”

“I want to love it.”

“And?”

“I...I don’t know.”

John nuzzled into Sherlock’s neck, sucking at the skin there, raising a small welt, before rubbing his stubbly cheek against the smooth skin of Sherlock’s. “You are so beautiful. You don’t even know how much.”

Sherlock inhaled, trembled, as John spoke, closing his eyes as he sighed.

Jesus. This was going to be an even bigger mine field than he thought. Sherlock didn’t just need his arse beaten-- he was starving for simple affection.

“Gorgeous. You scare everyone away because you’re brilliant, but that just makes them extra stupid.” He’d give Sherlock what he needed. Pain. Punishment. But this too was something Sherlock seemed to need, and didn’t even recognise. He soaked up the praise like a desiccant drew water, and fuck if that didn’t tug at something John wanted to keep to himself. That small Pandora’s box within him was telling him that it was too late.

But if it was too late--  it was, it was \-- he was going to make it worth it.

“I’m going to give you everything you need. The things you know about. The things you don’t.”

John tightened the grip he had on Sherlock’s cock until Sherlock looked up with a grimace.

“I  am going to fuck your throat. I’m going to make you choke on it.”

Sherlock’s eyes were huge and clouded. Want? Trepidation? There was something else that John was afraid to examine, afraid to look away from, lest it disappear.

“I’m going to turn your arse red. I’m going to open you up and look at your insides. But most importantly, I’m going to take you apart.”

“ John .” There was a damp patch forming on John’s stomach where Sherlock had been pulled against him,.

“What’s your safe word?”

“Crucible.”

John released Sherlock’s wrists so suddenly that Sherlock almost pitched forward before catching himself. John leaned back to rest on his own hands and tried to exude confidence, but his palms were moist with a mix of eagerness and worry as they made contact with the wood floor.

“Take out my cock.” John spread his legs, just as obscene as if he had been fully naked.

Sherlock responded with gratifying alacrity, pouncing on John’s zip. The button, the zip, both melted away. The boxer briefs were pushed down, the elastic band pulled under his balls. John was slightly larger than average, not oddly shaped or anything. The hair that nested around his cock was a bit darker than the hair on his head and kept trim. John was pretty fond of it, but Sherlock, Sherlock looked at his bits as if he were having a religious experience, was inhaling John’s scent, which just made John plump up more, because God,  God , was there anything better than having Sherlock worshipping at your feet?

Sherlock’s spidery fingers were spread against John’s hips on either side of his cock, slightly kneading. So much pale, so much pink. Sherlock’s face washed of colour under the glare of the nearest lamp. Those lips which had nearly captured John the previous day, licked wet and wanting. John could feel the hot puff of Sherlock’s harsh exhales against his skin, and he had to fight to keep his eyes open because this was too good to leave to the imagination.

Sherlock’s tongue came out to swipe at his bottom lip one more time, then he moved with a rush, setting soft lips to the head, wet warmth to John’s shaft, swallowing him half down before pulling back, pursing his lips on the upstroke to maximise the-- “Fffuuu...”

John could feel the smirk that he could not properly see. Sherlock, gliding his mouth back down, taking a little more. Taking, instead of being taken, and being smug about it.

John grabbed Sherlock by the ears and the curls as he was halfway back up John’s cock, and pulled him back down, hard.

God.

That mobile mouth, wrapped around the root of him, that throat, clenching down on the head as Sherlock fought to control his gag reflex. That first frantic sputter, moist evacuation of air, fighting to breathe through his nose just as he was fighting to swallow into a rhythm.

It was gorgeous.

John eased Sherlock halfway back up, but didn’t withdraw his cock. Sherlock sucked in several breaths through his nose, hard, practically wheezing, but the eyes that were turned up to John were smiling and lax with desire, tearing up at the edges.

“You look unreal. Like a fantasy. People don’t look like you in real life.”

John pulled him back in with a roll of his hips, pulling him in by the hair and slackening his grip on the upstroke, getting into a casually brutal rhythm. Sherlock tried to keep up-- swallowing on the intake, letting John hold his cock there for a moment to luxuriate in the pulsing constriction. The wet sounds on each thrust, the aborted coughs, the familiar gutteral glossolalia of a hard throat fuck...John had missed it, but this was better than any that had come before. Because it was Sherlock.

He reached down to Sherlock’s face, feeling the cheeks alternately distend and hollow, rubbing at Sherlock’s throat to feel himself in the bulge there as he plucked at Sherlock’s bottom lip with his thumb.

“So good at this. You look so good.” John couldn’t resist thumbing at the tears that collected in the corners of Sherlock’s eyes, streaming down to mix with the sweat that created a sheen on his skin. He raised one thumb to taste the salt and the sweet. John couldn’t normally come from receiving a blowjob alone, but there was nothing normal about this -- the control, the being devoured whole, with lips, with eyes.

Sherlock hummed at the praise, eyes fluttering closed as he also found a rhythm, falling into a pattern of flex and give that received John’s cock with a minimum of resistance.

“Do you like it this way? Being used?”

“Mmm.”

“Being hurt?”

“Mmmm.” Sherlock would be hoarse and raw after this, but he was obviously loving the way John plunged into his mouth now, quicker, but more shallow.

John reached down to touch Sherlock, finding him hard and ready, lightly furred bollocks tightening in his grip. Sherlock was leaking copious amounts of pre-ejaculate, making the foreskin slippery against the head as John ran his fingers over and around, surprising loose a high pitched whimper. John immediately tightened a hand around Sherlock, squeezing hard.

“Don’t come yet.”

Sherlock grunted. An exclamation, a protest.

“You don’t come till...oh fuck. You don’t come till I say. And we aren’t --” John gritted his teeth, his own balls drawing up, the fluttering of orgasm just beginning to encroach. “Ah...we aren’t nearly...”

Nearly there...

“Nearly...”

John’s breath came in short bursts, and it was suddenly too much-- the pull on his prick, the sex smell heavy in the room, the sight of Sherlock blissing over being force-fed John’s cock.

“Fuck, Sherlock! Fuck. I’m going to...”

Sherlock swallowed even harder, started bucking into John’s thrusts, taking him harder, higher.

“Take it. Take it all...”

John clawed his hands even deeper into Sherlock’s hair, losing his fingers in those soft curls to clasp Sherlock’s skull, cradling it and stroking it even as he ravaged Sherlock’s mouth, hips faltering, mind stuttering to a halt before everything seemed to fast-forward into orgasm and he poured everything into Sherlock’s mouth. Red lips, soft lips, tongue stroking him, trying to get a taste of him, and oh!

Oh.

oh.

So...

Mmm.

It was a minute or two before John pulled away from Sherlock, still smoothing his hands in Sherlock’s hair. He fell away from Sherlock’s mouth with a dirty wet slurp, a string of saliva connecting them, wobbling in the air between lips and cock before stretching and breaking with a miniature firework pop.

Debauched porn star was an amazing look on Sherlock -- working out the kink in his jaw, mouth a sexy ruin, just a bit of come at the corners, limpid eye fucking, flush from the face all the way down his chest, nipples hard and tight.

John closed his eyes and luxuriated in the afterglow while Sherlock waited, uncharacteristically quiet, cock uncomfortably hard and impatient.

John finally got his breath back enough to grab Sherlock to him by the biceps, pulling him until he was half sprawled on John, his breath fast and fluttering in John’s ear, cock a hard presence against John’s thigh, leaving a slimy trail on his skin.

“What I was trying to say...” John was barely whispering, but anything louder would have felt out of place. He turned his face into Sherlock’s neck, nuzzling there with his nose. “Is that we aren’t...” A kiss placed on the warbling pulse, the flat of his tongue tasting the beat . “Nearly...” Another kiss, this time to the corner of his jaw, nipping and wet. “Done.”

First kisses are usually tentative things, but John plunged into Sherlock’s mouth with his tongue. This was no soft tangle of lips, but an ownership of Sherlock’s mouth, John fucking his tongue against  teeth and gums, sliding it along Sherlock’s, quiescent and willing. Sherlock tasted of bitter John and tea, and something almost herbal and sweet, like a Pimm’s. John took Sherlock’s mouth as if he could own Sherlock by force of will, make sure that Sherlock was claimed enough, willing enough, wanted enough, because...

John backed away enough to take Sherlock’s bottom lip between his teeth and bite down, pulling away slowly, letting the flesh slide away before diving back in for more. He could feel Sherlock smile into the shallower kiss, so he took it deeper, counting the ridges of Sherlock’s upper palate with a sweep of his mouth.

Sherlock’s lumbar spine was supple under John’s hand as he smoothed it down to take ownership of Sherlock’s arse. He guided Sherlock against him for long moments, tonguing, rubbing, trying to imprint himself onto Sherlock, place his mark.

Cut him so deep he’d never be rid of the scar.

It really was much, much too late.

And John was a sick, sick fuck.

The kiss was a temporal anomaly, lasted forever, lasted not long enough, but eventually John pulled away enough to speak. “What’s your safe word?”

For the first time since John had known him Sherlock looked...confused. Sexy, fuckable, visceral, wrecked-- all of those things, but he wasn’t quite tracking John anymore. Not quickly, anyway. Quite an ego boost, that.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock’s brows gathered in the middle as a familiar pissy look started to take over. Counterintuitively, it made John want to grin.

“Crucible.”

John bit at his clavicle, still grinning.

“Sherlock.”

“Yes?”

“Get the crop.”

~~~

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Sherlock stood, legs shaking beneath him like a newborn colt’s, naked arousal singing in the air between them. This was better than he expected. This was so...and John was so...The crop. The crop was...

Sherlock stumbled to the hall, and then into his room, grasping the door jamb on either side as he reeled momentarily. He shook his head, trying to clear it a bit. He didn’t want to surface much, but he’d be damned if he was going to face-plant in this condition.

There. It was in the corner, propped up with an umbrella, a blowgun, a cane with the head of a snake devouring an apple, and a broken violin bow. Familiar black leather looped over itself, slightly worn from use, but not enough to be floppy and soft. The shaft was extremely flexible and returned to true with a delicious snap. The grip was rubber, pebbled with pea-sized nodules that sometimes squeaked against the black leather of his gloves. A sportsman’s crop-- no mere cheap toy, this.

Well used, familiar. Purchased far before [redact].

Sherlock hefted it, stroking the handle to appreciate the texture, when a hand came around his side. John didn’t take the crop from him, though. Instead, he curled his hand around Sherlock’s, pulling the crop against Sherlock’s chest to hold it there. John’s other hand came up to pet the small of his back. He shuddered, goosebumps flowering on his skin as John nuzzled his nose into the nape of Sherlock’s neck.

“You are you know.”

“What?” Sherlock was only half paying attention. The slide of John against his bare skin was distracting.

“Beautiful.”

“John. Don’t...” He didn’t know what he was going to say. Deny it? Deny John?

“Your mind is like a prism. The way it refracts. I can’t follow the full spectrum.”

“My mind?”

“You have to know how much I want you, but your body is the least of it.”

“ John .” For some reason, this was harder than any punishment his body could take. It hurt, but it also lifted something from him, leaving him lighter, but uncomfortable with the change, like the pins and needles of blood rushing back to a dead hand.

“This is a terrible idea.” John was quiet, but there was a smile in his voice.

Very probably. But that didn’t mean he could stop this. It was already set in motion. “I don’t know why.” Sherlock’s voice was raspy and raw, like he had just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes, lighting one with the remnants of another. He did know actually, but there were too many variables to list that would lead to an unfavourable outcome,  john unhappy with him john hating him john leaving john dead , but he wasn’t sure what John would see as significant, and that was just ignorance of a different type.

John, just to be contrary, was lighthearted in reply. “Safe. Sane. Consensual.” He laughed into Sherlock’s shoulder blades, and pulled Sherlock against him into an even tighter one armed hug before relaxing his grip again. “We’re never safe. Never sane, either.”

Sherlock didn’t have much to counter that.

“I don’t see this being much different.”

Sherlock gave up, smiled, tilting his head back to rest against John’s shoulder. “Mmm. Yes. But isn’t it sexy?”  
  
That startled another laugh out of John. “What?”

“Our mutually assured destruction.”  
  
“Yes. Quite.” John cleared his throat, and Sherlock could imagine the blush that was creeping over him. John’s other hand slipped around his waist to rub soothing circles into Sherlock’s stomach. It was...nice.

Sherlock forgot about the crop, the persistent erection, and held on to John. He wasn’t sure where he’d end up, but he couldn’t help but swallow around the soreness of his abused throat, and the lump that suddenly occupied it.

Something significant was happening, but for once he didn’t want to examine it too closely.

“We were always going to end up here, weren’t we.” John’s breath fanned out, feathering the curls at the base of Sherlock’s neck, and Sherlock marvelled at how neatly John was reading his thoughts.

“It was always...a possibility.”

“What’s the probability that this all turns out all right?”

“Exceedingly small.” His reply was quick and tart. And getting less truthful by the moment.

Another laugh. Genuine. Lovely.

“My favourite odds.”

What a coincidence. “Mine too.”

John kissed the back of his neck in a way that had nothing to do with possession and everything to do with things Sherlock usually left alone. And Sherlock had the sudden inkling that maybe he didn’t control this thing between them.

Maybe he never had.

An alarming thought, but right then he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Not with John wrapped around him like a cephalopod. Not when John led him to the bed.

Not when John had him crying out into the bedding, tearing at the sheets.

And not even later, curled up together in the drowsy aftermath, John stroking his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Please review. I live for feedback. No, really. I am needy.


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